It’s all in the perspective

Talking with a friend on being pressured to “make peace” with her hugely toxic parents, I found myself saying something I want to remember for future use.

You ARE making peace with them. The kind of peace that comes from having a border fenced with barbed wire and patrolled by armed peacekeeping troops from a neutral third party.

For some of us, “making peace” means coming together into emotional closeness. For others, it means a lifelong process of negotiating an end to the hostilities.

(In other news, I’ll be at one foster home or another for 72 hours straight this week, and then I have a six-hour training on nonviolent conflict intervention, which is like the martial art of the helping professions because the goal is to cause the least amount of harm possible. I’m considering laying in a stock of meat pies and chocolate chip cookie dough for myself when I get off work on Thursday, because that level of stress and exaustion demands easy-to-procure carbs.)